


prisoner; freed

by cosmicpoet



Category: Dangan Ronpa - All Media Types, New Dangan Ronpa V3: Everyone's New Semester of Killing
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, F/M, Happy Ending, Hurt/Comfort, Rapunzel AU, Suicide Attempt (minor), fairytale AU, self-harm (minor)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-10
Updated: 2018-01-10
Packaged: 2019-03-03 01:19:44
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,194
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13330440
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cosmicpoet/pseuds/cosmicpoet
Summary: Rapunzel AU. Maki sits in her tower, cutting her hair and letting the men that try to exploit her fall to their deaths. But her newest suitor is different - he doesn't want to marry her, or hurt her; he just wants to help her see the beautiful world that she's missing out on.





	prisoner; freed

**Author's Note:**

  * For [dodono](https://archiveofourown.org/users/dodono/gifts), [joyfulwriting](https://archiveofourown.org/users/joyfulwriting/gifts).



Maki grips her hair with her fist, and pulls as hard as she can. Her morning routine consists of giving herself pain that ripples through her scalp and makes her eyes water; she doesn’t care that she’s ripping chunks of hair out with her bare hands, she’s damn sick of existing so that other people can view her through stories and legends.

The tower in which she exists is cold, damp, and hard to live in. She’s never seen the world beyond this one room - she knows that her true parents died, and that she was snatched from her house by the same woman who is now keeping her imprisoned here. Still, having never known a life different to this, she can’t truly lament on her pain - she has no knowledge of the outside world that would make her long for a different life. Of course, the woman who keeps her prisoner tells her stories, but they conflict each other - sometimes, she is told of the beauty of the outside world, of the magnitude of mountains and vast skies, deserts and seas; but sometimes, she is told of war and bloodshed, stories that brought terror to her feeble heart as a child. But now, she is indifferent. She knows that her life is built on the lies that she’s been fed since she was a child.

But there’s nothing that she can do. She learned a long time ago that defying the woman who keeps her captor only ends in pain for her - it’s a memory that she’d rather not dwell on. Her life is simple, meaningless, but she feels selfish thinking that she has it badly, when she knows that at least, if anything, she is alive.

For the moment, she knows that her captor is away from the tower. This is all she knows - she doesn’t even know this woman’s name. She sees her on rare occasions; she has blue hair, glasses, and stands with a terrifying stature. Otherwise, Maki is completely alone. Her daily food is distributed through a slot in her door, and besides this, she is completely alone with her thoughts. When she was younger, she tried to write poetry in her head, but with no pen and paper to write it down, the thoughts quickly dissipated and she learned that any effort made to live a life that was more than simplistic would be in vain.

Of course, she had tried, in the past, to defy this. She hadn’t eaten for days, she’d been on the verge of jumping from the tiny window in her room, but in the end, she just passed out from exhaustion and had woken up with a throbbing headache and a plate of cold food next to her. Of course, she’d tried _something like that_ once more, but the thought of it makes her choke on the nothing that surrounds her. It’s not a memory that she particularly wants to remember.

Nowadays, the days just blur past her. Honestly, she’s waiting to die. If she had the courage, she’d jump out of her window for real this time; the thought of her bones crushing at the bottom of the ground, of dying free, on her own terms, captures her mind. She doesn’t want a grand life, she just wants to have control.

But she doesn’t do that. Instead, she sits on her windowsill, and drapes her hair out of her window. Many people before have climbed her hair, trying to rescue her, trying not to free her, but to capture her for themselves; she cuts off her hair when this happens, and listens to the beautiful _crack_ of dead, immoral bodies crumbling to the ground below. Always, her hair grows back, and she wishes, sometimes, that it wouldn’t - it gets tiring to murder with a simple flick of a knife. All she has is herself, and she’ll protect herself with as much force as it takes; she’ll protect herself from anyone that she can - except her captor, who has complete, terrifying control over her.

There’s a tug on her hair, and she screams at the pain. Most people who climb her hair don’t care about her, and she grabs her knife from the side of her, expecting another murder to quickly occur. She won’t feel a thing. _She won’t feel a thing._ She tells herself this as she glances down from the window.

“I’m sorry,” a voice shouts from beneath her, “I didn’t know it would hurt.”

She’s confused - nobody has tried to _talk_ to her before, and she doesn’t want to kill this person, not yet, not when she wants to experience proper conversation.

“What?”

“I said I’m sorry,” the voice shouts, “for pulling on your hair!”

“I’m giving you once chance,” she raises her voice, “get down, or I’ll cut my hair and let you fall.”

“I can’t do that.”

“Why not?”

“Because I’m here to rescue you!”

She’s so dumbfounded, she sits, confused, for a moment. By the time she looks out of the window again, she sees the suitor who’s currently climbing up her hair; he’s attractive, she thinks. Not that she has a large selection of people to base human appearances on, but she enjoys looking at him, his purple hair flying in the wind, his face screwed up in concentration as he holds onto her hair and pushes his feet against the walls of the tower. Her hand falters, still holding the knife, but doing nothing with it.

Her time to choose is now: kill this man, or let him climb. She has a finite amount of time.

She hasn’t made her choice, so time chooses for her. He reaches the top of the window and climbs through, collapsing just as he enters onto the floor.

“That wasn’t very dignified,” she says.

He stands up and brushes out the creases in his clothes.

“I’m not a very dignified person,” he replies.

“So what now? You’re here to whisk me away and force me into marriage?”

“What? No!”

“Don’t act naïve,” she tells him, “it isn’t fooling me. I know about the legends. Whoever scales the tower gets my hand in marriage. Well, sorry to burst your bubble, but it’s wrong. I won’t marry anyone.”

“No, no,” he says, “it’s not like that. I mean…sure, I’ve heard the legends, but they’re bullshit. You don’t have to marry someone just ‘cause they took you away from this hell.”

“But…then why?”

“I just want to get you away from this prison.”

“You’re lying,” she glares at him, “nobody is that nice.”

“No offence, but have you ever _met_ anyone besides your captor?”

“Still! You must want something from me. And I won’t give it to you.”

“Honestly, I want nothing. Although,” he pauses, “I’d like to know your name.”

“There’s nothing that you can do with my name,” she says, “so fine. Maki.”

“Aw, cute! Mine’s Kaito.”

“Okay.”

“Come on, be happy! You can finally get out of here.”

“And after that? What if I use this knife,” she holds up the blade; it reflects the sunlight into her own eyes, and she quickly lowers it, “and kill you?”

“Ha! I don’t really care,” he says, “as long as I get you out of here, I’d die a happy man.”

“Why? You’ve never met me; why should you care?”

“Because I’ve seen the world, and it’s _beautiful._ And I heard all these stories about a beautiful woman locked up in a tower for her whole life, and I thought…damn, I’d hate to be trapped. So I decided to get you out of here!”

“Well, you fucked up. Because sure, you climbed my hair to get up here, but there’s no way for us _both_ to get down. So listen - this is the nicest thing I’ve ever done, but I’ll let you go. Just climb my hair back down, and leave. Forget about me.”

“Or,” Kaito says, “we could use the door?”

“The…door?”

“Yeah, that one right there!”

He gestures to the door at the other end of the room. Maki’s blood runs cold.

“We…we can’t,” she says, her voice shaky.

“Why not?”

“It’s locked, for one.”

“I have a sword,” he says, “and a lot of reckless abandon. Let’s just smash it open!”

“Kaito, we _can’t._ She’ll…she’ll find out. And then she’ll…”

“She’ll what?”

“She’ll hurt me, Kaito! She’ll lock me in here for days without food, and she’ll beat me, and she’ll board up the window so I can’t see sunlight for months!”

“Has she…has she done that before?”

Maki nods. She hates herself for it, but she lets tears fall. Just thinking, for too long, about the punishments she’s had to endure in the past reduces her to an anxious state; whenever this happens, she’s not sure what’s going on, but it destroys her. She crumples to the ground, and draws her knees to her chest - she’s breathing shallowly and heavily, like there’ll never be enough air in the world to fill her lungs. Her hands pull at her hair, tearing sharply right at the roots, until she feels Kaito’s hands gently pull her away from hurting herself. After a few moments, she looks up; his face is a picture of beautiful confusion.

“I-I’m sorry,” she says, “I shouldn’t…”

“No, don’t apologise. You haven’t done anything wrong. Don’t worry - I’ll keep you safe.”

“How?”

“Well, I’ll lay down my life for you,” he bows, and extends a hand to her. She pulls herself to her feet.

“That’ll accomplish nothing,” she says, “because you’ll die, and then she’ll…”

“She’ll never hurt you again.”

“How can you be so sure?”

“Because I believe in myself…and I believe in you. Come on, Maki, let’s get out of here.”

She’s shaking, but she takes his hand once more. Something in his eyes, in his stance, in his words, makes her believe in him - and if she believes in him, then by extension of his statement, she must believe in herself too. They approach the door; he with excited confidence, she with utter terror. He stabs his sword against the lock until the wood breaks and he manages to force the door open.

“You’ll be fine, follow me,” he says.

On shaking legs, she cautiously traces her feet down the steps after him. They’re almost at the door when she hears a sound, and her heart stops.

“Kaito, she’s _back.”_

He stiffens, but his confidence doesn’t fail him; he firmly pushes her behind him, draws his sword into the air, and waits for the door to open.

There’s a brief moment wherein time itself hangs in the air. Then, the door opens, and the woman standing in the doorway pauses in shock, before she begins to advance on Kaito. He gulps, and lifts his sword so that the tip is close to her chest.

“Maki and I are leaving,” he says.

“You’re going nowhere.”

“Oh yeah? Tell me your name,” he says, “so I know what to call you as I kill you.”

She laughs. “Tsumugi Shirogane,” she tells him, bitterness in her voice, “perhaps you’ve heard of me?”

“T-Tsumugi Shirogane,” he repeats, “famed for cruelty; stealing from merchants, killing with no remorse, you’re…you’ve…how can you have kept Maki captive for so long?”

“Oh,” she laughs, “it’s simple. I did it… _because I could.”_

Maki gasps. Her whole, cruel life has been a game - nothing more than horrifying entertainment for someone who was evidently famed for disgusting inhumanity.

“It ends here,” Kaito says.

“Oh, does it now?”

Tsumugi lifts her hand and, before Kaito can react, bolts of lightning erupt from her fingers, hitting him right in the chest. He collapses to the ground, clutching at his heart; he looks like he’s about to vomit, and Maki can’t bear to tear her eyes away from him.

Picking up his discarded sword, Tsumugi wields it above his chest, and then pushes down. He sharply inhales and squeezes his eyes closed; Maki knows that the blade hasn’t penetrated deep enough to kill him, but the pain he must be experiencing will be excruciating. Tsumugi laughs as she twists the sword, causing him to squirm and convulse.

“Stop! Stop it,” Maki says, “he didn’t know. He didn’t know about you. Let him go, please.”

“Why would I do that?”

“I’ll do anything you want. Kill me instead. I’m begging you.”

“Maybe I’ll kill you as well…perhaps I’m bored with keeping you prisoner.”

Maki glares at her. She can’t bear to look at Kaito, bleeding on the ground.

“Let him go, Tsumugi,” she says, conviction in her voice. She’s never known the name of her captor before - let alone used it - but there’s power in words, and she’s ready for battle. With confidence inspired by Kaito, she lunges at Tsumugi, pushing her away from him and pinning her against the wall. In anger, nineteen years of built up hatred, her thumbs press in on Tsumugi’s throat, until she is gasping for air and clawing at Maki’s arms. With her sharp fingernails, Tsumugi draws blood from Maki’s wrists, but Maki doesn’t let go - even when Tsumugi goes limp, Maki keeps pressing in until she knows for sure that her captor is dead.

After this, she runs over to Kaito, holding his head up with one hand, whilst her other fumbles clumsily around his wound.

“I-I need to help you,” she says.

“I’m fine,” he chokes out, “you should go. Take your chance. _Run.”_

“Not without you,” she says, tears filling her eyes, “you _saved_ me.”

“So I’ve done my job,” he replies, “now go.”

“Never. I can fix you up.”

“You know nothing of medicine.”

“I…I know somewhat.”

She runs through the bottom floor of the tower - it cannot be called her home, as she has never seen this part of it all before. Eventually, she finds the kitchen, and fumbles through cupboards until she finds sterilising alcohol and bandages. She shudders at her imagination, when her mind finds itself wondering why Tsumugi must have needed these - most likely for prolonged torture; to hurt someone, and then bring them back to health so that she could hurt them once more. Pushing this thought aside, she rushes back to Kaito.

“Listen, I’m sorry,” she says, “but this is going to sting.”

He grits his teeth. “Get it over with.”

She applies the sterilising alcohol to his wound and he winces, instinctively reaching up and grabbing her arm. For a moment, she pauses, and holds onto his hand; he’s beautiful, warm, and in _so much pain._

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” she says, “I wish I could make it not hurt.”

“No,” he whimpers, “it’s fine. It doesn’t hurt at all.”

“You can’t lie. I won’t think any less of you if you tell me truly how much pain you’re in.”

“A…lot.”

“I need to clean the wound; I can do it with one hand. Keep holding onto me, okay?”

He nods. She resumes sterilising the wound, biting her lip whenever he tries to hold back his cries of pain. Once she’s done, she bandages him up.

“We need to go,” she says, “can you stand up?”

“Of course I can! I’m not weak,” he laughs feebly.

“You’ve been stabbed, let me help you,” she pulls him up and puts one of his arms around her neck, “here, I’ll bear most of the weight.”

“You’re an angel,” he says.

They exit the tower, and Maki almost collapses. She’s seen the sky from her window, but never like this before; previously, she’d only been able to feel fresh air on her face, and only if she’d pushed the upper half of her body out of her tiny window. Now, the wind and the warmth of the sun envelop her, surrounding her whole body with an infinite amount of sensations; she can’t help but collapse to her knees in the grass, taking Kaito down with her.

“What’s wrong,” he says, worried, “are you okay?”

“I’m…I’m fine. I just…I’ve never felt…Kaito, _thank you.”_

“The world is pretty wonderful,” he replies.

“I’m sorry, you’re hurt, I should wait until afterwards to feel all of this.”

“No, no,” he tells her, “I’m fine. I’ve been in my fair share of fights - I’m not exactly dying. Let’s just sit for a while. I don’t want to overwhelm you.”

They sit together, their backs leaning against the tower. Maki reaches down and holds his hand.

“Can I ask you something?” Kaito says.

“Of course. I guess I owe you an answer, since you saved me.”

“Don’t say that. Don’t tell me anything that you don’t want to; you don’t owe me anything.”

“I…I don’t mind.”

“Oh,” Kaito says, “I guess…I just wanted to know…how you knew what to do in a medical situation? Since, y’know, you’ve been in that tower forever.”

Maki gulps. She’s been trying to repress this for so long.

“Well,” she starts, “it was a few years ago. She…Tsumugi…had stopped my food for about three days. I was delirious, depressed, and I…uh…I thought I was dying. And I sort of told myself…I told myself that I should die on my own terms. So I took the knife from the food that I hadn’t eaten, and I…well, you can guess the rest. Tsumugi found me, and I watched as she was…fixing me up.”

“Oh…fuck,” Kaito says, “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have asked.”

“No, no. It was a long time ago. Really, it was just a hunger-induced delusion.”

“There was obviously feeling behind it,” he turns to her, holding both of her hands now, “and you shouldn’t reduce that to nothing. But I promise you - nothing like that will ever happen to you again.”

“I…I trust you,” Maki says.

“So, I’ve got you out of here now. You can leave, if you want. I have some money, and some supplies - I can give them to you and take you to the nearest town and set you up in a hotel for the next month. I told you, I’m not here to exploit you.”

“I don’t want that,” she says.

“What?”

“I mean…I want to be with you. I want you to show me the world. Kaito, I trust you. I’ve never trusted anyone before. I don’t want this to end…please.”

“Of course, Maki. I’d do anything for you. Where do you want to go first?”

Maki looks at the sky. “You’ve seen the moon, right?”

“Of course! I love looking at the stars - I’m going to go there, one day, when I find a way.”

“Take me there, Kaito,” she says, “I want to see the moon.”

He takes her hand, and they stand up.

“I’ll take you anywhere. You can see the world now.”

“I only want to see it with you,” she says.

“Me too,” he replies.

They walk for a while, heading in the direction of the next town. Kaito leads the way, and Maki follows, holding his hand, smiling at all of the new things she’s seeing; trees, an abundance of sky, _love._

**Author's Note:**

> We were talking about a Rapunzel kaimaki AU in the kaimaki chat and I ended up writing this. I made it a little bit angsty but I hope you enjoyed the happy ending! Leave a comment if you can, please, they really make writing worth it! As always, have a lovely day :D
> 
> Kind of based on this wonderful art piece: http://puddingsu.tumblr.com/post/169002467231/idea-originally-belongs-to-princeasimdiya12


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